With the open-air Starlight Square entertainment complex dismantled after four years and removed from a city-owned parking lot, leaders in Central Square are redirecting their energy to a series of big initiatives and new places for play and the arts as well as to a rebranding that identifies the square firmly as Cambridge’s downtown.
The plans were unveiled Wednesday at a Central Square Business Improvement District breakfast at Le Méridien Boston Cambridge hotel in the University Park area near the square, where the BID shared the stage with a parade of speakers – including its consultants, Progressive Urban Management Associates.
“We’re going to own ‘downtown Cambridge,’” said the consultant’s principal, Brad Segal, introducing a theme for much of the presentation.
With a rezoning process for the square in its first stages, that means it’s important for the Business Improvement District to be aggressive in presenting a vision that will create that “central place we call a downtown where we can all come together,” said Geeta Pradhan, president of the Cambridge Community Foundation. Her vision extended to the possibility of land swaps that over the course of many years would allow for the creation of a Central Square green space.
“We have the ability to recognize a vision,” said Pradhan, who has a background in architecture and urban planning as well as in fundraising. “Successful downtowns are destinations.”
That can be done by cementing Central Square’s identity as a “third place” between work and home, as a persistent remote-work trend that emerged from the Covid pandemic only highlights that the square is not the kind of downtown dominated by offices, Segal said.
What to expect in Central
Along with general goals for the next five years in Central Square from keeping it clean to filling storefronts – and offering those businesses technical help and support – there were a series of specific initiatives introduced at the breakfast.
The return of a World’s Fair street festival in September 2025 was perhaps the biggest news, though it was left for the very end of the event before mentions of the Cambridge Carnival’s 30th anniversary on Sept. 8 and a celebration of Indigenous Peoples Day on Oct. 14 on University Park’s green.
The music- and multicultural vendor-focused World’s Fair ran 1993 to 2005, limping to an end when corporate sponsorship faded amid an economic downturn. Its return was among the most prominent wishes heard during the months of sessions shaping the new five-year plan, run by Segal’s PUMA team. Shana Bryant Consulting will help return the fair to Massachusetts Avenue.
Business Improvement District president Michael Monestime said his ideal headliner for that World’s Fair is Vapors of Morphine, the band that grew out of Cambridge’s most iconic band, Morphine, which specialized in a unique “low rock” between the band’s 1993 debut “Good” and frontman Mark Sandman’s death of cardiac arrest in Italy in 1999. There’s a Mark Sandman Square in front of the square’s Middle East concert venue and a 2015 documentary about the band; when Vapors played two 20th anniversary show at the Lizard Lounge, tickets sold out within hours.
A special event coming much sooner: A Central Square Night Market running 5 to 11 p.m. Sept. 21 in partnership with the Boston Night Market.
A Dx Arcade is coming with everything from air hockey and Dance Dance Revolution to ultramodern virtual reality games, matching one opened May 5 in Harvard Square by Sean Hope, a lawyer and developer who’s recently been focused on entertainment and event venues. It’s expected to go into Central’s former Metro PCS cellphone storefront, now empty for several months.
The BID is still pinning down lease details for The Collective, an art gallery and creative hub that will host artist residencies and events in partnership with the nonprofit Street Theory, Monestime said. It reflects the square’s state-given designation as a cultural district, which runs in five-year terms first granted to Central in 2012. The space will focus on “creating pathways for artists of color,” said Street Theory principal Liza Quiñonez, “giving them a place to call home” while creating art happenings drawing people to the neighborhood.
Two other parts of the organization’s strategic plan focus on placemaking: A districtwide lighting plan called Your Light is Central in partnership with Masary Studios of Boston; and Central On Air, a community radio station run in partnership with restaurateur Gary Strack (creator of the still mourned The Enormous Room and its cocktail-focused replacement, Brick & Mortar) and Oliver Mak. The station will be based in a tucked-away alley storefront at the base of the Market Central apartments where Massachusetts Avenue meets Main Street.
The station music studio’s storefront is intended to interact with sidewalk foot traffic while live-streaming shows from local artists and those touring to The Middle East and other music venues, presenter Eric Sarno said. He pointed to similar stations that paved the way, such as New York City’s East Village Radio, with peak listenership of up to 1 million and guests such as Lou Reed and Drake between 2003 and 2014, and Lot Radio, launched in Brooklyn in 2016 and citing millions of listeners between its livestream, YouTube and SoundCloud and guests such as Louie Vega and Skrillex.
Central Square is “the last remaining location in Greater Boston that has the legacy, legitimacy and power to represent the sonic phenomenon that includes such diverse movements as the iconic reggae and hip-hop performances at the Western Front, the small pub scene that hosted the folk rock movements of the ’60s and ’70s and the nationally influential rock club venues of the 1990s and 2000s and a vibrant and trendsetting DJ culture,” Sarno and Strack said in the slideshow presentation.
Starlight Forever Fund
A business improvement district collects mandatory fees from its property owners and spends that money on improvements and services such as events programming, districtwide marketing and street cleaning that supplements municipal services; the new initiatives will redirect fees that had been used on Starlight Square since it opened at 84 Bishop Allen Drive during the Covid pandemic. It became a home for everything from roller skating nights to City Council inaugurations and a Covid-era high school prom.
Starlight – a temporary structure of steel poles and plastic scrim beginning to show signs of wear – closed in June. The move was announced in March after the city clawed back promised federal aid money, though the same parking lot is being eyed by city staff for a similar permanent indoor-outdoor entertainment structure topped by mainly affordable housing.
Also announced at the event was the Starlight Forever Fund, hosted by the Cambridge Community Foundation and intended to move toward finding a permanent home for Starlight Square and recapturing the magic keeping it alive long past its originally intended single season of distraction from the pandemic.
“It’s time to move with the same energy toward a permanent structure,” said Nina Berg of Flagg Street Studio, the design house that created Starlight physically, and creative director at the BID.
Pradhan, whose speech began to rouse people toward donating to the cause, agreed “we need to keep that spirit alive.”
“It shouldn’t just remain a memory,” Pradhan said of Starlight.
The Wednesday breakfast and presentation drew 175 people. In the run-up to the event, as the list of expected attendance grew and seating grew tight, Monestime said he found himself calling to double-check earlier sign-ups to see if they really were coming – or needed that plus-one.
A stronger
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“We’re going to own ‘downtown Cambridge,’” said the consultant’s principal, Brad Segal, introducing a theme for much of the presentation.
What? Who are these people and where did they get permission for loud parties/festivals? Central Square is not Harvard Square, nor will it ever be. Harvard had a lot of space. Beyond that Harvard had a buffer zone that separated visitors from residents. In Central, residents begin one block in from Mass. Ave. A lot of residents in high-rise and mostly multi-unit housing, and the city is planning more tower housing without parking.
This sounds horrid for residents. We stopped talking about parking, but this is a big deal and will be worse, especially on event days. Without a car, we are told the city will be a 15 minute city where all your needs can be met within a 15 minute walk. So we have CVS, a hardware store and Target. That’s not enough to cover needs of current residents and with the affordable housing towers planned for Central Square.
How can we put this back in the hands of Cantabridgians that live here and actually own the property around Mass. Ave.
Margaret – Cambridgport
Just think how convenient it will be for people to get their drugs since Central Square is drug central.
How many of these “consultants” live near the Starlight. The residents of the area deserve their quiet and privacy. Let’s get these carpetbaggers out of Cambridge.